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Qualitative Reasoning

Qualitative Reasoning or QR is an area of Artificial Intelligence which reasons about systems without using numbers. Qualities are used instead which can be as simple as positive, negative and zero, or small, medium and large. These quantities are used when there is not enough information about systems to use precise numbers allowing QR to be able to predict the outcomes. This is a very useful technique and much research has been undertaken in the area to:

Simulate as accurately as possible
Decrease execution time
Combine with other useful fields

The diagram below shows a pendulum swinging and the qualitative values of all parameters in the model. The horizontal displacement is x, and y is the vertical displacement. The angular velocity is denoted by w and the angular acceleration by a.
The video can be stopped, restarted and progressed frame-by-frame by right-clicking on the control. The values of the variables are updated in real time and are shown in red when they become 0 momentarily.

This example shows how qualitative values can be used to describe how a system behaves. The table below shows the values of the variables for each time-step.

time	0	1	...	17	18	19	...	35	36	37	...	54	55	56	...	72
x	-	-		-	0	+		+	+	+		+	0	-		-
y	+	+		+	0	+		+	+	+		+	0	+		+
w	0	+		+	+	+		+	0	-		-	-	-		-
a	+	+		+	0	-		-	-	-		-	0	+		+

JMorven is a Qualitative Reasoner developed for the ModKin project which runs in parallel and can reason in a qualitative and quantitative manner and anything between.